The year 2021 reserved quite a few "lashings" for the wine tourism sector. The impact of the pandemic was impressive, but in a lesser measure than in 2020. The high season saw a succession of extremely high peaks of demand that put even the most equipped structures in difficulty.

"2022 could follow the same dynamics" declare the co-founders of Winedering, Stefano Tulli and Denis Seghetti, who continue "reason why it is useful to be ready, in particular with an offer aligned to the market requests, first of all the digital one".

Precisely for this reason, the founders of Winedering have collected and released a preview of some data coming from the platform Winedering.com, the Italian portal dedicated to wine tourism that boasts the highest number of online winery experiences (over 1200).

"The data comes from bookings collected in 2021 and a profiled subset of 23,000 web sessions" says Denis Seghetti, CDO of Winedering.com.
"The purpose of this data" he say "is to really help those who deal with wine tourism to better understand the reference targets and the best types of offers in order to intercept them, avoiding to use old and useless 'vanity metrics', measures that do not give any added value except to those who distribute them passing them off as miraculous".

Here is an extract of some extremely interesting data:

• 32% of users who visited Winedering.com fall into the 25-34 age group, 21% are between 18 and 24, and 19.8% are between 35 and 44.
  If it is rather normal to expect most of the users to be between 25 and 34 years old, it is however relevant to notice how the 18-24 years old age group is proposing itself in a massive way within the reference targets of the wine tourism panorama.
  
  

• 18-24 year olds convert (that is they book) 5% more than 25-34 year olds and 30% more than 35-44 year olds.
  It is not surprising that young people, although having a lower average spending power compared to other age groups, have a strong attitude towards online bookings and payments, something that in more than one occasion stops users over 40. The latter dynamic is, however, in strong decline given the impact of the pandemic on the buying habits of Italians.
  
  

• 53.25% of visitors are female. Women are confirmed to be more decisive in booking than men, with a conversion rate 14% higher than men.
  This figure is now rather "trivial" and should not surprise insiders, as it is rather in line with the data released by a study of optimonster in which it is found that, in general, women buy online as much if not more than men, although by a very little.
  
  

• 73% of users browse and book directly from their smartphones, with a conversion rate lower than desktop users by only 14%.
  Also in this case it is confirmed an established fact: if you do not have a fast and "responsive" website, that is optimized for smartphone navigation, you risk losing 3/4 of the potential wine tourism market. Marketplaces such as Winedering.com are often the quickest and most convenient solution to the problem, as they were born from the principle of "mobile first", a parameter that even Google now considers primary in the construction of rankings in its famous search engine.
  
  

• More than 70% of bookings received include experiences that expressly contain gastronomic pairings. From the simple cold cut platters, through cheese and local products tastings, to full or light lunches, wine travelers prefer to book experiences in which the wine/food combination is no longer limited to simple toast or breadsticks, but to something richer, though not necessarily too elaborate.

"Taking a cue from these data, when and if necessary, wineries can tweak the offer proposed to their customers" declare the cofounders of Winedering, who add "it is clear the importance of creating offers having a quality/price mix rather varied, in order to involve both the 35-44 target, which has a higher average spending power, and the 18-24 target, which is increasing its propensity to winery tourism and to discover quality wines, all with a strongly digital oriented approach".

Joining platforms such as Winedering.com and taking advantage of their visibility and technologies in a free way, allows to quickly intercept these targets and convert them into customers, without the need of huge investments in new technologies and zeroing the time to market.

"We will soon release other important data in order to face the high season in the best way" declare Denis and Stefano, "in particular about the importance of reviews as a powerful marketing tool and some important details about the timing of reservations".

The year 2022 has just begun, but the world of wine tourism is already getting ready to...polish its glasses!